NanoWriMo is Shutting Down; 6 Publishing Opportunities; Subscriber Success Stories
This monthly column is published on the fourth Thursday of every month, and is an opportunity for me to share information that doesn’t fit anywhere else in our publication. This includes a wide range of opportunities for writers, news and information, and subscriber’s recent success stories.
Opportunities:
Coreopsis Journal is seeking submissions for their autumn 2025 issue which is called The Fool’s Journey: Mytho-Anarchism. This issue is devoted to the journeys of fools, crusaders, and unexpected heroes. An issue dedicated to hope, Solar-punk, hope-punk, envisioning a better future. Fantasy that explores hope and grace. Priority reading for people living in climate related disaster areas and war zones. They are a paying market.
Promised Protagonists, a literary magazine focused on on diverse Middle Grade fiction and poetry, is open to submissions for it’s print anthology call open until April 30. You can see their full submission guidelines here.
Winning Writers has a fee free call for submissions that is closing to submissions on April 30th. The theme of the call is LIVE AND LET DEI. They encourage you to submit an original poem that makes creative use of the words that the Trump administration is flagging on government websites and research papers. The final judge is Jendi Reiter. There is no monetary prize, nor is there any geographic limitations on who can enter. You can learn more here.
The Imagist is open to submission flash fiction and flash CNF (no longer then 1000 words), and poetry up to 40 lines. They close to submissions on April 30th.
The Gilded Weathervane, which was previously reviewed here, is open to submissions through June 1st of work “relating to fall and winter, loosely or boldly”.
Moonday Magazine is a magazine focusing on publishing short speculative fiction. You can read our review of them here.
News:
The non profit NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is shutting down. They have faced a number of serious issues over the years including financial ones, and from my perspective, this was a long time coming. I say this as someone who is a huge fan of writing challenges and who “won” NaNoWriMo three times, about a decade ago.
If you want to watch a long frustrating video about their perspective on what happened, you can watch their interim executive director Kilby Blade’s announcement about the state of NaNoWriMo here. One interesting thing to note in the video is that in the initial summary of NaNoWriMo’s 2024 experience Blade did not even mention the big scandal involving their statement about using AI in the fall 2024. This statement was covered by the news, including major outlets like the CBC and Slate and involved board members leaving and real exodus of author support. The AI crisis eventually come up near the end, in a section titled “What About Other Alternatives”, at first obliquely and then directly, but it is portrayed as a big over-reaction on the part of the community, rather then an actual issue.
It seemed very clear to me by the end of the video that NaNoWriMo as an organization did not really want to take responsibility for their bad decisions (one of the major ones involving a predatory sponsor wasn’t mentioned at all) and wanted to blame the community for the issues that arose. It was also clear that they increasingly didn’t understand where the community was coming from. It does seem that many members of the community have already started their own groups to write together in November (which is long how NaNoPoMo – National Poetry Writing Month has operated). As a side note, if you know what writing organization they were in talks to merge with, please let me know. The one thing Kilby Blade does cover near the end that I wholeheartedly agree with, is that it is very important to fund the arts organizations you do believe in. The nanowrimo subreddit does have this long megathread of NaNoWriMo alternatives up.
Subscriber Success Stories:
Rosalind Goldsmith’s short story collection Inside the House Inside, was published by Ronsdale Press.
Jack Maconaghy’s novel Too Soon A Spy, was published by Aethon Books.
Rebecca Petersen’s short story Eroica was published in Gargoyle Online.
Pedro Ponce’s work is featured in Buttonhook Press’s OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters Masters Series Series Flash Fiction.
Daniel Speechly’s flash fiction story The End of Instruction was published in The Sandy River Review Online.
Isobel Cunningham’s piece Luna Awoken was published in the spring issue of Polar Borealis.
Charles Sartorius horror short story, Shadowed, has recently been featured in Metastellar eZine.
Lakis Fourouklas‘s story Hungry Ami was published by Cafe Lit Magazine.
Richard LeBlond’s essay, Over the Edge at Fogo, has been published by Witcraft.
Al Simmons’s story, Just Add Salt, was published in the April issue of Sci Phi Journal.
Julie Archer’s short story, Captain Cook, was published in the February issue of inScribe Journal of Creative Writing.
Tong Ge’s novel The House Filler received an Honourable Mention for the 2024 Canadian Book Club Award for Fiction and won the 2024 NAIWE Award for Literary Fiction.
Mike Sluchinski’s essay Breathing Books was published by Kelp Journal.
Megan Wildhood‘s short fiction piece Hey! There are Kids Here! in Blanket Gravity and her poem Directions in the World to Apply to My Head was published in and received honorable mention in Issue 4, Volume 6 of Whispers to Roars.
Felix Bill won 1st place in the open category of Love Letters to London, 2025 with his short story Brixton Born and Dreaming, which was first published last year by The Citron Review.
Daniel Christensen’s piece This Small Universe was published by Trollbreath Magazine.
Ian R. Villmore’s 100-word short story Reignition by was published by Tadpole Press.
LindaAnn LoSchiavo’s article Six Sizzling Strategies to Snag Book Reviews, was published by The Chrysalis BREW Project.
Please send us an email at success.stories@authorspublish.com if you have a publication success you want to share in our next update. You must include a link to the publication. You can also include a link to your website (if you have one), and the publisher/journals main landing page. The publication date must be within three months of the current date. Please note that we are only listing work that has been traditionally published by literary journals, magazines, or traditional presses. We are not covering vanity presses or self-published books.
Bio: Caitlin Jans has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She is the co-founder of Authors Publish and The Poetry Marathon. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals including: The Literary Review of Canada, The Fiddlehead, Jelly Bucket, The Penn Review, The Adroit Journal, and Killer Verse. Her prose and poetry has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, BILiNE, The Best Small Fictions Anthology, and The Best of the Net. You can learn more at www.caitlinthomson.com.
